Of the two persons who left their homes this morning, the legless beggar, owing to having ridden part of the way in a street-car, was the first to reach the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square, whence the last rear-guard of fashion in old New York retreats before the advance-pickets of the encroaching slums, like a stag before a pack of hounds.  Here he ensconced himself, placed his tin cup on the top of his organ, together with the few pairs of shoe-laces which proclaimed him a merchant within rather than a beggar without the law, and proceeded to enliven the still quiet neighborhood with the dreadfully strained measure of Verdi’s “Miserere.”  He turned the handles of the little organ fitfully, so that now the strains of sorrow arose at such long intervals as hardly to be connected with one another, and now all huddled and jumbled like notes in a barbaric quickstep, and as he played he addressed his instrument in a quiet, cruel voice.

A house-maid opened a window in the servants’ wing of No. 1 Fifth Avenue.  Blizzard turned his head slowly at the sound, and looked up at her with agate eyes, coldly interrogative.  There was no one else at the moment within earshot.

Nevertheless before speaking the house-maid looked nervously into the house behind her; then up the avenue, and down into Washington Square.  She was a girl of some beauty, but her face was most engaging from a kind of waggish intelligence that it had.

“Tst!” she said.

The organ squeaked and rattled.  It was manoeuvring for a position from which to attack the “Danse Macabre.”  Blizzard indicated by a lift of heavy eyebrows that he was all attention.

“You can trust Blake,” she said.

Blizzard grunted.  “Send him to me at six.”

“Marrow Lane?”

He nodded, and turned from her with an air of finality.  The house-maid hesitated, drew a long breath, pulled in her head, and closed the window.

A loose-jointed man in clerical garb came hurrying down the avenue.  He made longer swings with his right arm and longer strides with his right leg than with his left.  He had a white, thin face, and a look of worry and anxiety.  He was perhaps distressed to think that the world contained many souls to whose salvation he would never be able to attend.  Perceiving the legless beggar, he stopped hurrying, sought in his pocket, and found a few pennies.  These he dropped into the tin cup.

“God bless you, reverend sir,” said the beggar in a voice of deep irony.

“Don’t,” said the clergyman.  He managed to look the beggar in the eyes.  “How many hats have we?” he asked in a quick whisper.

“We’re on our fourth thousand.”

The clergyman was visibly upset, “Six thousand to go,” he muttered.  “I shall be caught.”

The beggar smiled.  “Come to me at six-thirty,” he said.

The man of God’s eyes brightened.  “You’ll help me again?”